The best CRM
Every option ranked — open-source, self-hostable, and commercial — by our transparent Sovereignty Score, with honest trade-offs so you choose what fits you, not us.
The system of record for customers and deals. The most expensive per-seat software most companies buy, and the category with the deepest lock-in.
L5Applications — layer 5 of the AI stack- 1
EspoCRM
Top pickOpen sourceA complete CRM that a small team can run without a specialist.
Free and open source to self-host. Some advanced extensions are paid. · in our Salesforce comparison →
What is EspoCRM? →90sovereignty - 2
SuiteCRM
Open sourceThe SugarCRM fork — enterprise features, no licence, no vendor.
Free and open source. Commercial support available from SalesAgility. · in our Salesforce comparison →
What is SuiteCRM? →91sovereignty - 3
Twenty CRM
Open sourceThe modern open-source CRM — the best-designed option, and the youngest.
Free / self-host; managed cloud available · in our HubSpot comparison →
What is Twenty CRM? →88sovereignty - 4
Odoo
Open sourceCRM as one module of a full business suite.
Community Edition free and self-hostable. Enterprise is per user per month. · in our Salesforce comparison →
What is Odoo? →87sovereignty - 5
Twenty
Open sourceThe modern one — built to feel like software from this decade.
Free and self-hostable. Twenty Cloud is a paid hosted option. · in our Salesforce comparison →
What is Twenty? →86sovereignty - 6
Mautic
Open sourceOpen-source marketing automation — the Marketing Hub half, not the CRM half.
Free / self-host (you pay your server and an SMTP sender) · in our HubSpot comparison →
What is Mautic? →86sovereignty - 7
Odoo CRM
Open sourceCRM as one app in a full business suite — compelling only if you want the rest of it.
Free / self-host Community Edition; paid Enterprise edition and cloud · in our HubSpot comparison →
What is Odoo CRM? →78sovereignty - 8
HubSpot CRM
CommercialFree for unlimited users — the honest hosted answer for small teams.
Core CRM free for unlimited users. Sales, Marketing and Service Hubs are paid and escalate steeply. · in our Salesforce comparison →
What is HubSpot CRM? →30sovereignty
Is it free?
The free tier, its real limits and where you start paying — read from each vendor's own pricing page and dated.
Run these yourself
What each one actually needs — real RAM, honest running cost, and the setup time nobody quotes.
- Self-hosting EspoCRM 2–4 GB. The official Docker stack runs four containers (app, daemon, websocket, MariaDB). A 4–5 user Docker install reported 40% of 4 GB in use, and forum users put 2 GB as fine for light use.
- Self-hosting SuiteCRM 4 GB. Even a test box is quoted at 3 GB, and production adds MySQL, the cron and, from 8.10, a Messenger worker.
- Self-hosting Mautic 4 GB for a list in the low tens of thousands, 8 GB beyond that. One 4 GB server ran out of memory updating segments at about 50,000 contacts on Mautic 5.
Replacing a specific tool?
Head-to-head comparisons for each popular crm product.
Straight head-to-heads
Two crm tools, side by side — verified facts and a plain verdict.